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Drinking Game Can Be a Deadly Rite of Passage

FARGO, N.D. - The homemade video captures the first hour after the stroke of midnight when the birthday boy turned 21 and could legally drink.

His friends thrust shots at him in a booth at the Bison Turf bar and taunt him to drink, shouting obscenities and chanting his name as he tosses back one after the other with beer chasers. After 30 minutes and the 13th shot -- a Prairie Fire, or tequila with Tabasco -- he vomits into a metal bucket, provided by the bar, the birthday souvenir taken home by so many 21-year-olds before him. Then he resumes his drinking.

"It's the best time of his life," a friend slurs to the camera. "We've all done it. It's a tradition."

The tradition is "power hour," or "21 for 21," as it is known in some other places across the country: 21-year-olds go to a bar at midnight on their birthdays, flash newly legal identification and then try to down 21 shots in the hour or so before the bar closes, or as fast as possible.

Colleges and cities have tried various tactics to stop the ritual, and now, hoping to deprive power hour of its frenzy, Texas and North Dakota are considering legislation that would declare that 21-year-olds reach the legal drinking age not at the stroke of midnight on their birthdays but seven or eight hours later in the morning.

But the experience of Fargo, where power hours sent one 21-year-old into a coma and killed another, shows how difficult it can be to change a culture of drinking.

Here, the lights of bars beckon brightly against the relentlessly flat, snowy plains surrounding them, and people often preach personal responsibility. There were no rules against bars serving the intoxicated when Lance Jerstad went into a coma after a power hour at the Bison Turf in November 2002, and the city agreed to pass such an ordinance only after much resistance from officials and bar owners who said that responsible drinking fell to the drinker, not to bars.

It took Jason Reinhardt's death in March 2004 for bars in Fargo to put up signs saying "You can blow out 21 candles, but we won't allow you to down 21 drinks." And if few people here advocate 21 shots in an hour, many still resist what they see as government intrusion on the tradition of the first drink at midnight, one that has been shared with parents and family friends.

"We were having a power hour a night, and no problems," said Pete Sabo, the owner of the Bison Turf, a bar so close to the southern edge of North Dakota State University here that it has become like an extension of the campus. Most, he said, were just a drink or two.

"There's responsible drinkers at 18 and there's irresponsible drinkers at 50," Mr. Sabo said. "Making them wait eight hours later is not going to make them any more responsible."

The police seized the homemade video of an unidentified 21-year-old in an investigation of the Jerstad incident. It shows a 21-year-old who made it home safely, but Police Chief Christopher Magnus has made it Exhibit A in an effort to convince bars and local officials that power hour is more than a youthful ritual.

"Somewhere along the line this became the norm," the chief said, showing the video on a recent afternoon. "There's this attitude of inevitability about becoming totally intoxicated, and it's hard to convince people why it's wrong when that's the social norm."

Lawmakers behind the power hour bills say that only criminalizing the midnight binge can stop it. "I'm not in the goody-goody business, but I thought if we can remove a kid from a situation that is potentially fatal with a small change, we should," said Rob Eissler, the Texas state representative proposing to make the official drinking age there begin seven hours after men and women turn 21.

Joel C. Heitkamp, the North Dakota state senator behind a similar proposal here that would make the legal drinking age 8 a.m. on the 21st birthday, agreed. "We want them to wake up in the morning and realize they have a whole day," he said, "and that they don't have to cram what most of us would consider an evening's activity into one hour."

Already, dozens of colleges as well as a private foundation set up by the parents of a 21-year-old who died after a power hour send out 21st birthday cards to warn students against the dangers of excessive alcohol. In East Lansing, Mich., a big-drinking college town, bars set up a system to alert one another when they see 21-year-olds out celebrating birthdays.

Mike Hatch, the Minnesota attorney general, declared the rituals around 21st birthdays "a parent's nightmare" after his daughter was arrested celebrating hers in Chicago a year ago.

The federal law making 21 the drinking age itself turns 21 this July. No one knows when in those two decades the tradition of power hour started. Here, people say, it began as a few drinks at a bar at midnight. "The focus wasn't on getting wasted, it was on having a good time," said Jason Ramstad, the manager of Chub's Pub, a popular bar south of North Dakota State University, who had his own power hour 11 years ago.

He describes the ritual back then as "doing a few shots, trying to find a phone number and maybe getting some breakfast with your friends."

Now, screaming mobs surround the celebrator, holding to-do lists of shots like the Three Wise Men (a concoction of Jack Daniel's, Jim Beam, and Johnnie Walker), and the Cement Mixer (Baileys with lime juice to curdle it). Friends record the number of shots downed on napkins, or scratch it into the 21-year-old's forearm.

Bradley McCue, the Michigan State University student whose parents set up the foundation after his death in 1998, had his number of shots -- 24 in two hours -- written on his face when police found him dead.

"It's just what you do, around here, anyway," said Lee Nelson, 21, drinking recently with friends at a teeming "Beach Night" at Playmakers, a club in Fargo. "You're finally a real adult." He celebrated in June with 12 shots at a bar in Moorhead, Minn., just across the river.

In a health education class of 30 prospective teachers at Minnesota State University at Moorhead, about half the students raise their hands when asked whether they have gone through a power hour. Asked how many shots, they reply 17, 15, 3, and in more than one case, "I don't remember."

"It wasn't fun for me," said Holly Godbee, a petite 26-year-old whose power hour was on Nov. 16, 1999. Still, she saved her napkin and remembers her count (17). "I was stupid," she said. "I could have died."

Most in the class admit that power hour was hardly the first time they drank. "It was just a normal night at the bar for me, but my birthday," said Randy Backman, who turned 21 on Sept. 9, 2003, with a power hour at Coach's in Moorhead, the same bar where six months later Mr. Reinhardt did the power hour that killed him. "But there's something about 21. You look forward to it. People start asking you, 'Where are you going for your power hour?"'

The homemade video that police seized, filmed on Sept. 25, 2002, shows how much peer pressure has built up around power hour. Police asked that the 21-year-old in the film not be named. The video opens with friends jostling him into the booth. When he pleads for more time to drink his shots -- "please, just give me a chance" -- his friends ridicule him:

"No puking!"

"I took it on my 21st!"

"You waited 21 years to do this!"

He begs them to let him retch, and, despite their insults, finally leans over the bucket to do so, one hand still clutching the beer cup, the other, a shot glass. And when the bartender finally cuts his friends off from buying him shots, even he wants to keep going. "It's 12:40!" he hollers. "Bars don't close till 1!"

Police used the video to help shut down the Bison Turf for two days. But that move was widely disputed, as were the new laws that made it illegal for bars to serve people who were obviously intoxicated. A city commissioner, Chief Magnus said, asked whether the next step would be shutting down McDonald's because of high obesity rates.

Since Mr. Reinhardt's death, police say, bars have become more cooperative. Bars, though, say they still get calls asking if power hour is allowed.

"The kids aren't getting it," said Mark Doyle, the owner of Chub's. "You'd think after what happened that 21-year-old kids would understand the ramifications of drinking too much." Chub's offers a mug of beer for power hour, but no shots. Other bars, too, have imposed limits, or banned it.

College students here argue that shifting the legal drinking age by a few hours would only drive the midnight celebration across the border to Minnesota, or into homes, where there is less supervision. Those just over the far side of 21, however, say the legislation might finally relieve the pressure around power hour.

"Power day isn't as much fun," said Mr. Backman, now 22. He spent three days sick after his own power hour, a recovery he calls "a turning point."

"I used to drink to get drunk," Mr. Backman said. "That's kind of the norm when you're an underage drinker. A month after, you realize it's a lot of hype."

Now, he said, he would rather go to a restaurant and have a beer with dinner.